Electrical connectors comprising an insulating body having electrical contacts carried thereby are well known in the art. in the so-called male connectors, the insulating body carries pin-like contacts which extend above and below the insulating body to facilitate electrical connection from one element, such as a printed circuit board, to another element, which may, for example, comprise a so-called female connector. As is well known, a female connector comprises an insulating body which carries an electrical contact which is generally capable of receiving at one end thereof a male pin, and at the other end thereof an electrical conductor which may be another male pin, a single electrical conductor, or a single strand of a multiconductor flat ribbon cable. Typically, the aforedescribed male connector and female connector are utilized in a tandem or coupled fashion to provide electrical connection from one element such as the printed circuit paths on a printed circuit board to individual conductors or the multiple conductors of a multiconductor ribbon cable.
The aforedescribed male and female table connectors are generally manufactured with a predetermined number of contacts carried thereby. For example, a typical male connector of the type described above might comprise a length of insulating material having ten, twenty, thirty, or any number of pins carried thereby. Similarly, a female connector may comprise a body of insulating material having individual cavities disposed therein, each cavity of which carries an electrical contact. Like the male connectors, the female connectors are commonly manufactured with ten, twenty, thirty, etc., contacts.
There are several drawbacks associated with the manufacture and use of both male and female connectors of the type described above. First, the end user may use several connectors, each having a different number of electrical contacts or "positions". He must therefore purchase and inventory many different connector sizes, i.e. he must maintain a supply of 8-position, 12-position, 20-position connectors etc.
Second, the present industry standard for the molded male header and its mating molded female connector is a fixed 36 positions in a single-row configuration, and two rows of 36 positions each in a double-row configuration, i.e. 72 positions. As an example, an end user using a single row 10-position pin header can cut three lengths (each having 10 positions) with a remainder of six positions, or a 17% scrap rate.
A continuous or endless connector would eliminate both the scrap and multiple inventory items.
A continuous connector for solving this problem was disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,387, which disclosed an endless connector comprising a continuous length of insulating material with the length of insulating material having electrical contacts spaced therealong and being provided with severance means intermediate the contacts for selectively severing the length of insulating material at locations intermediate the contacts. In this manner, the end user need only store the endless connector and, in a given application, can sever the continuous length of insulating material in such a fashion that the resultant connector comprises exactly the number of contacts which is required for his particular electrical application.
In one embodiment of the connector disclosed in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,387, the endless connector is of the so-called male type in the sense that it includes a body of insulating material which has pins embedded therein. In another embodiment the connector is of the so-called female type having side-by-side cavities within which are disposed female type contacts. In accordance with another feature, the male and female type connectors are provided with interconnection means by which the may coact with one another to provide an electrical connection from one point, for example, an electrified aperture in a printed circuit board, through the male and female connectors to individual electrical connectors or the strands of a multiconductor flat ribbon cable.
The endless connector disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,387 comprises a continuous length of insulating material manufactured by, for example, injection molding. In accordance with the method by which the endless connectors disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,230,387 were manufactured, each continuous length of insulating material was made in a mold as a single piece. In other words the length of the piece of insulating material cannot be longer than the length of the mold. This limitation severely hampers the ability to manufacture so-called "endless" connectors, since the mold must in turn be "endless".